Sure, in a "Didn't the Americans claim they'd have self driving cars by now? One has to take their claims with a pinch of salt" sense.

Attributing particular people's claims to an entire country doesn't really make sense for the most part.

That would be something completely reasonable to hear in China. Your point? In countries far far away, people tend to abstract entities involved (the Americans did X, not Tesla did X).

My point is that that would be completely reasonable to hear in China, but would sound strange to an American. Likewise, contrariwise.

Ya. It’s normal. In fact, I’m pretty sure linguists have studied this phenomena, but I can’t remember the name for it.